http://homepages.which.net/~rex/bourne/diary200903.htm
and the relevant bit is here (please note this website is a small local one and so they keep moving and deleting these bits). So keeping a copy like this is good.
Saturday 28th March 2009
The retired banking boss Sir Fred Goodwin whose windows were smashed and car vandalised this week as a reprisal for his gargantuan and unearned pension payout should count himself lucky for had he been living in this part of the country 100 years ago then the consequences would have been far more severe. Instead of a foray lasting a few minutes by angry anti-capitalist protestors outside his Edinburgh home, he would have found himself at the mercy of the mob for several days, anxious to vent their wrath by what was known as ran-tanning, a particularly nasty form of social punishment prevalent in the South Lincolnshire fens until the early years of the last century.
Ran-tanning was a notorious method of expressing public indignation whenever someone transgressed the bounds of what was perceived to be good behaviour but as with all illegal gatherings the definition was usually confined to that laid down by the ringleaders and often closely resembled a riot. If a person had committed some act of which the other villagers disapproved, they would congregate near their house carrying an effigy of the persons who had incurred their displeasure and making a terrible commotion by beating with sticks, tins, cans, pots, pans, buckets and kettles, playing mouth organs, booing, shouting and singing and on occasions lighting bonfires. The demonstrations were carried on for a number of nights in succession, usually three, after which the effigy would be burned.
This was a form of vigilantism likely to provoke social disorder, doled out to anyone who breached the local code of what was right and what was wrong and was particularly likely in the case of sexual misdemeanours such as adultery and domestic incidents such as wife beating. In fact, cases became so frequent and so serious during the late 19th century that they eventually attracted the attention of the authorities and ran-tanning was banned under the Highways Act of 1882. Yet cases persisted. Illicit sexual liaisons were particularly prevalent in this country during the Great War of 1914-18 when husbands had either volunteered or been conscripted into the army to fight in the trenches of Flanders and France leaving wives behind who were vulnerable to temptation although always wary of what the neighbours might say.
Not all of the soldiers were sent home immediately after the Armistice and by the following summer, hundreds had still not been reunited with their loved ones and in 1919, a case came before the magistrates at the town hall in Bourne when it was alleged that a woman and her lover had been ran-tanned by a group of men at Rippingale on August 29th on the grounds that she had been carrying on with a sergeant-major on leave while her husband was still away from home serving with the army.
Eight men were summoned to appear for unlawfully joining in a brawl and the case created so much interest that the courtroom was crowded with villagers for the entire two-hour hearing when the police described how they had been called out to quell a riot in which a crowd of men were causing pandemonium outside a house by beating drums, tins, buckets, plough shares, old pieces of iron and playing instruments, shouting and yelling, later gathering in a nearby field where two effigies were burned. The disturbances continued for three nights by which time the entire village was in a state of commotion and the noise could be heard two miles away but the men refused to stop despite warnings that they were guilty of disorderly conduct.
Solicitor Cecil Crust, who appeared for the defendants, argued that the men were not guilty of a brawl and quoted the dictionary definition as “a noisy quarrel” and whilst he admitted that there had been some noise, insisted that the men were not quarrelling. His argument was overruled by the magistrates and Superintendent Herbert Bailey, head of the Bourne police, told the bench: “The conduct of these men was disgraceful and it is abominable that people should be subjected to such rowdyism.” After some discussion, the magistrates agreed to the charges being withdrawn provided the defendants expressed regret for their actions and undertook not to repeat such incidents under any circumstances in the future although they were ordered to pay costs.
Ran-tanning was by then dying out and the last recorded case in these parts was at Quadring Fen, near Spalding on 15th February 1928 when the victim was a woman alleged to have made remarks scandalising her neighbours. Police intervened and 23 people were charged with disorderly conduct when the court was told that ran-tanning was perhaps the only survival of mob law which existed in this country. All of the defendants were fined between five and ten shillings and ordered to pay costs and there have been no further cases of this nature since.
Perhaps the case of Fred the Shred has provoked a return to this old but effective method of castigation because we hear that banking fat cats in London have been warned to be on their guard during the G20 summit next week in case of revenge attacks by militants for the collapse of the financial system. We wonder if ran-tanning is likely to spread to the capital and if this is why the police are being issued with dozens more taser guns.